Category Archives: Travel

JB

I went to Malaysia for lunch.

I took the express bus across the causeway to Johor Bahru (known as JB). This was a short drive on a remarkably verdant freeway to Singapore passport control, at which point we all got off the bus to get out passports stamped, then got on another bus for a five-minute ride to JB. Then through Malaysian passport control, past customs (really, I just walked by it), and into a cavernous bus station with no clear idea of where to go next. I wandered around and around the station and the attached mall, looking for a bus to the center of town, before realizing that the station itself was in the center of town and where I wanted to go was only a few blocks away.

The mall attached to the station is big and new and the equal of anything in the US. Once you walk out the front door, you bump into the third world. Or at least the seedier areas of Los Angeles. It’s as if south-central LA and Beverly Hills were on the same block. I was barely out the door before some sketchy guy tried to sell me an iPhone.

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Further on, it’s more of an amalgamation of small shops and restaurants catering to Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese customers. Kind of interesting to walk around and look at, but not something that takes a lot of time. I had lunch (mee mamak and ice kopi) at the Restoran Hua Mui (established 1946), then headed back to the station.

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It was pretty much the same process going back. The trip itself is only 10 or 15 minutes, but you have to go through passport control for both Malaysia and Singapore. Nothing complex, but it does require getting off the bus and being routed through a large building, only to come out the other side and get on a different bus.

The walk back to the hotel from the bus station is about a half a mile, and I had only just gotten off the bus when it started to rain. It rained progressively harder, but I was mostly able to stay undercover until I was about four blocks away from the hotel. By that time it was a full-scale cloudburst. I decided to run for it. I sprinted for about a block and a half before I realized that there was no point. I was already as wet as I could possibly be. So I just strolled the rest of the way.

One nice thing about the tropics is that even if you’re drenched, you’re not cold. Not until you enter an air-conditioned building, at any rate.

Wandering Through Hell

After lunch yesterday, I went to Hell.

Specifically, I went to Haw Par Villa, which is a defunct theme park from the 1930s that includes a diorama of the Chinese Ten Courts of Hell. It was built by the two brothers who created Tiger Balm.

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In fact, the whole thing is a collection of dioramas on the side of a hill. There are no rides. You just walk around and look at things.

And the things you look at are weird things. How weird are they? They’re this weird:

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And this weird:

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And this weird:

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And those aren’t even the weirdest.

That last one depicts the story of a man who rescued a turtle from a market. Years later, the man was in a boat that went down in a storm, and the turtle saved him from drowning. We see the man celebrating as he rides the turtle to safety while his comrades drown.

This teaches children compassion. Toward turtles, at least, if not necessarily toward humans.

All the displays are meant to be instructive, and let me tell you, children would not likely forget what they saw here, even after years of therapy.

The depiction of Hell was the best part, because that’s inside an artificial cave, which allows them to add spooky lighting.

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This whole thing is free, with no admission charge or t-shirt sales or requests for donations or anything that would explain how they pay for the upkeep. And it’s well-maintained. You might think it’s new if it weren’t for the fact that no one would dream of making something like this today.

PSA

Unusually tall people in boats should cover their ears when they hit their heads on bridges.

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Satay on the Quay

I woke up at 4:00 this morning. There’s not a lot you can do at 4:00 AM except wander around, so I did that.

I needed to exchange some more money. Airport rates are never good, so I hadn’t exchanged very much, because I knew I could do better in town. I figured there would be small currency exchange places all over like there are in Hong Kong.

There are not. They have some, but it took me about an hour to find them. For my trouble, though, I got a rate of 1.346, rather than the 1.3275 that I got on the airport, for a savings of US$5.55. Sweet!

Now I’m eating satay and drinking Tiger at a cafe on the Singapore River. The service is lousy, but I don’t have to tip them, and they seem content to just let me sit there and write blog posts on my phone.

No one seemed to be looking, so I drank the remaining peanut sauce straight.

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Arrival

I arrived in Singapore at noon on Monday, got a quick lunch at Heavenly Wang, which is a real name that I am absolutely not making up, then got some Singapore dollars and a metro card and took the train into town.

After walking for about a mile in the wrong direction, I found the hotel and checked in, then went wandering. I wandered through Little India, then up to a truly Byzantine mall called IOS Orchard, then somewhere else, I think. I’m not really sure where i was. I was able to sleep fairly well on the plane, since i had a row of four seats to myself and was able to make a bed out of them, but I guess i was more tired than I thought I was. Anyway, I eventually made it back to the hotel without incident.